AiG and NASCAR

The Director of Outreach at AiG, Tom Miller, is also a volunteer
chaplain at various racetracks. Tom was at the Kentucky Speedway this
past Saturday, helping the Director of Kentucky Raceway Ministry (KRM).
Mally, my daughter Danielle, my brother Stephen, and I visited the
speedway for the NASCAR truck race. We were able to visit first hand
with the chaplains and also a missionary who travels with the NASCAR
drivers. I have arranged to take these people through the Creation
Museum and provide them with AiG booklets for witnessing purposes. I
have included photographs of the race and speedway, and one of (from
left to right) Tom Miller (Director of Outreach at AiG), me, and John
Roberts, (Director of KRM) at the Kentucky Speedway in Sparta, Kentucky).

KRM is a volunteer association of ministry groups who are trained (and
in some areas certified) to serve the needs of the speedway employees,
the fans, and the competitors in the spirit of Christian fellowship.
John first became aware of the National Raceway Ministry organization as
a fan during a NASCAR race at the Bristol Speedway in Tennessee. God
used this outreach to get John’s life back on track, and he felt the
call to introduce the ministry to the then-brand-new Kentucky Speedway
near his hometown. As the state director of KRM at the Kentucky Speedway,
John coordinates the ministry of 200-plus volunteers throughout the
campground and grandstands. This year, John has also taken on the role
of Track Chaplain for this world class facility. Kentucky Raceway
Ministries maintains hospitality/fellowship tents in the campgrounds and
vendors’ area on speedway property by invitation of Kentucky Speedway.
The team provides physical and spiritual refreshment to the thousands of
campers, race fans, and speedway employees the entire time the speedway
is open. They offer coffee, cold water, cold lemonade, homemade
cookies, children's activities, gospel concerts, biscuit-and-gravy
breakfasts, handicapped transportation, information, and worship services
with singing, testimonies, and preaching from God’s Word. KRM also
provides a “trauma response team” in the grandstands and care centers,
anytime spectators are in the grandstands during actual racing events.

Pygmies in the zoo

Many of you may remember the sad story of the Pygmy, Ota Benga, back in
the early 1900s, who was put in the Bronx Zoo in an effort to bolster
evolutionary thinking. Well an interesting news item has appeared
concerning Pygmy musicians being housed in a zoo—and the human rights
activists aren’t happy, as this makes them look less than human!
Actually, if the human rights activists, most of whom believe in
evolution, were consistent, they would be saying that all of us are just
animals anyway! Here is a section from the news item:

“Human rights activists have criticised the organisers of a music
festival in the Republic of Congo for housing pygmy musicians in a tent at a zoo.

“Other artists at the Festival of Pan-African Music (Fespam) are staying in hotels in the capital, Brazzaville.

“The organisers say the grounds of Brazzaville zoo are closer to the pygmies’ natural habitat ... Activists say the pygmies are being treated like zoo exhibits ... A BBC correspondent says indigenous forest communities are among the most marginalised groups in Africa and are regularly regarded by their neighbours as less than human. ‘It’s clear that it’s a situation like we saw in earlier centuries, where people put pygmies in zoos to dance or to create a spectacle. They were treated the same as zoo animals and I think that we have a similar situation today,’ said Mr Owoko ....”